


Torn Apart

by AshStoryLover123



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020), The Old Guard (Movie 2020) RPF
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angry Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Drowning, Hurt Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Hurt Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani Waxes Poetic About Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova are in Love, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani is an Incurable Romantic, M/M, POV Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Protective Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Soft Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27835132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshStoryLover123/pseuds/AshStoryLover123
Summary: His words are a vicious snarl and he hopes they can feel it like the bite of savage mutt.“You think you can take me from him? You think you’ll survive that? Mark my words, mine will be the last face you see before death claims you. It will be swift because my love preaches kindness, but you will still die as easily as I would break down a door that’s keeping me from him,” Yusuf says lowly.In which Joe and Nicky are separated at the lab. Angst with a happy reunion.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 11
Kudos: 400





	Torn Apart

Joe isn’t a fan of heights but he can appreciate the view from the tall building he’s currently being pushed through. There are enough windows to make him feel a little untethered but the sunlight is refreshing, warm even and he musters a smile in Nicky’s direction.

Nicky, bless the man, cannot read his mind despite the near millennia they’ve been together but he still smiles in return. It’s tight around the edges though because there are chains around their legs, blood crusted on their faces and it doesn’t exactly paint a pretty picture. 

Still, it’s an inconvenience if that, as long as Nicky is at his side. 

They’re pushed rather roughly into a large open space, with Copley and an elvish looking man that’s all to excited to see them like they’re his Christmas presents come early. He waves his hands around as he speaks, like it’ll make his words sound important and Joe lets the words go through one ear only to pass through the other. The man ventures a little too close and he feels Nicky’s eyes on the side of his face.

Joe doesn’t even have to look at Nicky to know he’s smiling a little, too small for anyone to really notice but Joe.

Another step and Joe head buts him, possibly hard enough to give the man a concussion. He stumbles back a couple steps and the guards around him tighten their grips, forcing him to double over. 

It’s like they’d forgotten what he and Nicky were capable of until then, like they’d completely missed the part where he and Nicky had taken out eight guards with zip ties and handcuffs. Fools.

The rat-faced man, Merrick if Joe remembers correctly from his worthless spiel, has the audacity to look a little surprised when he finally straightens up, like he didn’t expect Joe to hurt him when he chose to stand inches away from his face spouting utter bullshit. 

Then he says something about the video, acknowledging Copley who’s looking more than a little uncomfortable, before he grabs the small knife from the table he fell against. Joe sees it coming, he isn’t an idiot, but he still barks out a curse when the sharp edge breaks his skin multiple times, ruining one of his favorite t-shirts.

According to Nicky, his arms look good in them. Granted it had been ruined anyway but still, another inconvenience amongst a pile of inconveniences that’s beginning to build and grate on his nerves. 

He hears Nicky shout beside him and that’s probably the only thing that actually bothers him of this whole mess they’ve been thrust into. It’s not easy, never got any easier, seeing each other hurt or helpless. It almost has him regretting pissing off Merrick. Almost. 

Because what really is the point of a deathless existence if you can’t taunt death just a little? 

When his wounds have closed and the scientist says something about a Nobel prize, like she’s already halfway to discover the secret to his immortality simply by observing it, he straightens up, blinking rapidly to clear the dark spots in his vision. Nicky’s eyes are trained on his face with all the alertness and focus of a sniper ready to take the perfect shot. Joe leans into him on instinct and their foreheads fall against each other.

And in that one blessed moment, the world isn’t spinning and everything is alright. 

But the moment is over all too soon and Merrick’s calling them mice, like Joe hasn’t been called things a thousand times more hurtful in the past and brushed them all off. He makes a joke about Nicky being a mouse, a common misconception like his lover’s slim figure could disguise the skill and grace in his every movement, characteristic of one the most powerful warriors to ever walk this earth. Nicky’s glare at Merrick is admittedly the best thing he’s seen all day and he’s almost forgotten that they’ve been kidnapped, almost laughs despite the gun pressed to the back of his head.

After all, it’s hard to take any of this seriously at this point. He’s wandered hot deserts for weeks without water, fought in wars that left him drowning in a sea of blood and bodies. He’s lived long enough to know that there can always be worse but with a woman on his side that was once worshipped as a god, it is hard to think of dangers that may befall them that they cannot get out of. 

He’s riding high, a little too overconfident and smug about the whole situation until a guard steps forth with a taser. His teasing mood falters a little in the face of it and he hears Nicky’s protests beside him before pain shoots up his spine and the world goes dark.

When Joe wakes, he’s alone.

The woman’s (calling her doctor would discredit the entire field of medicine) got a needle stuck somewhere between his fourth and fifth rib, her hands running over a rapidly healing wound on his abdomen in a gesture that’s uncomfortably reverential even but none of it matters.

None of it matters one bit. 

Because Nicky’s not here. 

Joe lurches upwards on instinct and the woman jumps back, startled, leaving the needle where it is. He fixes her with the harshest glare he can muster and she withers under it like a dying flower under the hot sun. 

“Where. Is. He,” he growls out lowly.

The woman pulls the needle out of his side, like that’ll diffuse his anger. 

“I asked you a question,” he grits out. 

“Guards,” she calls out, a little flustered. The flush is high in her cheeks and she turns even more alarmed as he struggles against his bonds like a trapped, wounded animal.

Which is precisely what he is, or at least what he feels like in that moment with rage flowing through him, setting his very heart on fire. And above that is the fear that’s so primal, so intrinsic that Joe cannot think, can hardly breath past it. 

He was going to kill every single one of them, throw them off of this goddamned skyscraper. This doctor in particular, he was going to take her apart piece by piece. 

But then there’s Nicky’s voice ringing in his mind, as familiar to him as his own. He can have whole conversations with Nicky in his head at this point and in most situations like this, he knows not only exactly what Nicky will say to him, but also the way he’d cross his arms and purse his lips in thinly veiled disapproval as he says it. 

They’re obstacles preventing you from getting to me Joe, just cut them down and move on. 

Cold, ruthless and heartbreakingly beautiful even in that. Perhaps Nile was right in claiming that their love language was violence. 

Joe will take those words to heart, will practice the kindness that comes so naturally to his Nicky. But he cannot stay his words, born of fear and anger that’s centuries old because Joe remembers every excruciating detail of every single time he and Nicky had been taken from each other in the past and the memories of that will always stay with him, always haunt him. They build up in him now and it’s in moments like this where the weight of his years really fall on him, where 900 years feels like the weight of a thousand worlds on his back. 

His words are a vicious snarl and he hopes they can feel it like the bite of savage mutt.

“You think you can take me from him? You think you’ll survive that? Mark my words, mine will be the last face you see before death claims you. It will be swift because my love preaches kindness, but you will still die as easily as I would break down a door that’s keeping me from him,” he says lowly.

He turns to the doctor and a small part of him genuinely wonders how she holds his gaze when his face, his fury no doubt resembles some of her worst nightmares. He feels like wrath incarnate. He is. The very devil would balk at his fury. 

“You think you’re doing important work? All you’re doing it waiting to die an unimportant, needless death that’ll be a speck, if that, in my long life,” he spits out.

There’s pin drop silence in the weight of his declaration and Joe takes the moment to make a silent vow to himself. 

He was getting out of here, sooner rather than later. 

He was going to kill every single person in this room before leaving. 

Then he was going to take Nicky to Malta and keep him bed for a week at the very least. 

Joe wakes up with no recollection of when he fell asleep, or why for that matter. Time’s turned into a tenuous thing that’s slipping right through his fingers. There’s a whole tray of samples from his body next to him, letting him know he’s been out for quite some time. 

Too long for just healing. Craning his neck as far as it can go, he finds the IV bag that was ensuring his sluggishness. But if these drugs were trying to dull his senses, the fact that he still doesn’t know where the fuck Nicky is, is a burst of adrenaline and fear that more than compensates for it. 

“Found anything interesting yet,” Joe tries. 

No response, not even a trace of awareness in the woman’s eyes. So she was doing this now. Joe feels the first flicker of annoyance. He can here Andy in his head, laughing a little at the fact that he was more annoyed by the lack of conversation than the fact that this woman was dissecting him like a fucking frog.

The door to the lab bursts open and in came a group of people in suits, Joe counts six pretentious assholes in total. Leading the charge is Merrick himself. He regards Joe with a curious smile and Joe can tell that the man’s taking a large amount of joy in the pain that’s no doubt apparent in his eyes. 

What he didn’t know was that the pain had nothing to do with the needles.

“Comfortable,” the man sneers. 

“Fine how are you,” Joe inquires, letting his eyes drift to the purplish bruise on Merrick’s forehead.

The man’s lips thin into a white line and Joe can’t help his smirk.

“They wanted to be here to oversee the practical trials,” Merrick says tightly, turning away from Joe. 

The sadistic woman beside him nods before pulling out a syringe. Joe has time to utter a stream of filthy curses before his vision goes black. 

Joe wakes up submerged in water and his first thought is that he is somehow dreaming of Quynh. He struggles to keep his eyes open, even as they burn, to take in his surroundings. New clues, anything. 500 years but he still cannot bring himself to completely give up. 

Instead of endless ocean he is met with four glass walls beyond which were a bunch of hazy faces. His instinct takes over as he fights to reach the surface of the container. His lungs start to burn but he refuses, he refuses to bang on these glass walls to beg these bastards to let him out. 

He’d rather die, which is precisely what happens as his poor lungs lose the battle and his vision turns dark once more.

He awakens to drowning again, which isn’t really surprising. He tries swimming upward only to realize that his legs are chained to the bottom of the container and while Joe has been blessed with many gifts, first and foremost the miracle of a human being that was Niccola de Genova, he doesn’t have super strength to break through these chains. 

He could struggle, thrash like a fish out of water (a poor analogy), or he could piss these people off. 

Joe wholeheartedly chooses the latter. 

As his lungs start to burn again, Joe lets himself drift down to the bottom of the container to sit cross legged. It takes effort not the twitch, not to move too much even as his lungs begin to scream. He places his palms on his knees and shuts his eyes. Between one moment and the next, he’s gone, and his last thought is of Nicky like always.

And it’s in thoughts of Nicky that he really drowns, the soul deep peace he feels envisioning the wonderful man in his arms, that smile lighting up Joe’s whole world, that face beautiful in joy, sorrow, anger and every other emotion on the spectrum because to all of them there is an undercurrent. 

His inherent good that makes Joe yearn for a better world, for that good, that kindness to belong in. 

Joe doesn’t count how many times he dies, the doctor was probably taking copious notes anyway, probably timing his deaths as well. Joe hopes his stillness was throwing off her timing, hopes it’s breaking that cold facade she’s now put up. 

900 years and he’s still petty. 

The room slowly starts to clear until it’s just the doctor and a couple of her assistants. Joe’s peed in his pants at this point and is honestly just grateful that the new water is constantly getting pushed in, though it’s all still a complete waste. Joe drops the cross legged position and takes to simply curling up, fighting to keep his composure as his body wages another war for survival. 

His false composure, his pride, his stubbornness and his pettiness is all has right now. Well that and Nicky. 

Even when everything is gone he’ll have Nicky. 

Night falls and Joe feels the first traces of panic. The doctor is gone but there’s a camera blinking in the corner of the room. It’s utterly silent as Joe drowns over and over again. It’s hard then, not to feel alone, not to think of the ocean, not to think of the sister he abandoned to this fate all those years ago.

And it’s no surprise then that it’s thoughts of Nicky that soothes his mind, his lifeboat, his everything. Still, Joe cries a little in the brief moments he has between death, for himself, for Nicky and for Quynh. 

Like there isn’t enough water around him already.

He wonders if Copley knew of Quynh, if he’d told Merrick, wonders if they’d chosen drowning on purpose for him.

A week passes like this and Joe’s beginning to dissociate. He can feel it, the urge to just bury himself in his mind, and let Nicky dig him out when they get out of here. It’d make this so much easier. Nicky would always be able to bring him back no matter how far gone he was.

But he can hear Andy’s disappointment ringing in his mind, telling him he was better than this. 

For fuck’s sakes Joe you’re 900 years old. Keep it together a little longer. 

He’s almost grateful when some people get too close to the tank, too curious and Joe can suddenly bang the glass hard to scare them away. It’s something different, something that tells him time is passing by, that he isn’t stuck in one moment, forever drowning in this cruel nightmare. 

With the lack of food, consciousness fades from him faster, until he’s just gasping for breath for mere seconds before blacking out again. And again. And again.

He hasn’t felt this tired in a long time and he feels a little like a child when he lets himself admit, under the cover of darkness, that he wants to go home now. That he’s done. Not with this life, not without Nicky, but he’s done nevertheless. 

By daylight, he summons his anger with what little energy he has left, and let’s every poor unwitting soul that dares look at him like an animal in a zoo to feel his rage. To never forget it.

He’d haunt every one of their fucking nightmares and in time, they’d regret it. They’d atone. 

He’d be free by then. 

Two weeks and he’s finally lifted out of the tank. His first breath of air in two whole weeks and Joe fights hard not to cry, fights hard not to show how terrible the entire experience was. He’s not going near a bathtub for at least another year no matter the allure of sharing one with Nicky. 

The guards holding him think he’s too lax with relief, and so they don’t knock him out, don’t even bother chaining his legs together. It’s pathetic really. 

Because even exhausted beyond belief, starved and perhaps even a bit traumatized, Yusuf Al-Kaysani is one of the best warriors to walk this planet. 

Six guards die before a fool manages to get a lucky shot in. That would show them, that a little test with water couldn’t dampen his spirit. When he awakens again, strapped down to the metal table, still in wet clothes, he turns to face the doctor and finds her looking at him a little expectantly. 

Joe fakes an exaggerated grimace.

“My poor curls are ruined,” he says. 

And the woman that hadn’t seemed fearful up until then, knowing he’d taken down six guards with handcuffs on, balks at the sight of his humor. 

He lets her see it in his face, the stark truth. That these are hurdles, barely hinderances. She doesn’t even know what true pain is, much less actually qualified to let him feel it.

Joe knew then that he’d be getting out of here soon. They’d already fucked up once.

It was only a matter of time and Joe had an endless supply of that. 

Joe placed a mental bet in his head that a trial by fire would be next. Sure enough, he wakes up from fitful sleep to an actual goddamned blowtorch. 

“Do you even know how to use that,” Joe asks, successfully keeping his fear hidden.

Had he been hurt more times than he could even hope to count? Yes. Had he been specifically burned by blowtorch? Yes, 1980’s if his memory serves him right. Did that mean this time would hurt any less, that he feared this pain any less? Absolutely not.

He was human after all, his immortality hadn’t taken that away. His survival instincts were still intact despite his inability to die, a terrible irony in itself. 

A bind came over his mouth and the blow torch descends on his leg. He jerks at the first lick of heat and then his brain descends into white hot fuzziness, the static of a TV that cannot find signal, and he’s screaming into the bind as tears coat his face. 

He was going to kill this woman, he was going to tear her apart, he was going to

Nicky, Nicky, Nicky. 

At some point he passes out, only to wake up in the fiery pits of hell once more. There were no blue eyes to take comfort in, no sadistic humor his scrambled mind could distract itself with, no thoughts left in his head but stop.

Stop, stop, stop for the love of everything holy and pure just stop.

But they didn’t and Joe didn’t need to lift his head to know that they only stopped when both his legs had been burned down to charred bone. 

The doctor left halfway to puke in the trash can outside and Joe found some comfort in that.

He’d be out of here. Just a little bit longer until someone fucked up big time. A little longer. 

The trial by fire is repeated three times and from a strictly scientific perspective, he understands the need to repeat an experiment multiple times to ensure accurate results. From the, ‘I no longer have legs perspective”, the repetition appears far more inconvenient. 

But it comes to an end, just as the trial by water did, just as all of this eventually would. 

“Congratulations. You didn’t puke this time. You’re officially desensitized to human suffering. You’ll make a fine doctor,” Joe drawls. 

Finally, finally, after nearly a month in this mess, the woman acknowledges him.

“How, how can you make jokes now,” she asks. 

“Surprised you haven’t gone digging around in my brain to find out,” Joe replies instinctively. 

“I’m not a sadist,” she rebuts. 

Joe laughs, hard enough that his stomach aches. Though that could also be from the starvation. He was going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe after this. 

“I’m doing this for the good of humanity,” she protests. 

She’d never seemed more like a child to him than in that moment. An idiotic, ignorant brat of a child.

“Between the two of us, who do you think is more intelligent doctor. Do keep in mind that I’m 900 years old,” Joe says. 

She just stares at him, refusing to answer.

“Don’t you think you can trust me on this when I say that there is nothing to be found by picking me apart? If there was, I would know,” Joe explains further.

She goes back to ignoring him then, or at least pretending to ignore him.

“You’re not doing anything important for humanity doctor. And if my beloved were here, he’d tell you that you could starting now. That there is room left for your redemption,” Joe said.

Her brow furrows as the unspoken question lingers in the air between them. Still, he keeps silent until she finally asks in the smallest of voices.

“And what do you think,” she asks. 

They just stare at each other in silence for a moment before Joe finds the right words. 

“I think you burned off my fucking legs,” he spits out. 

It’s answer enough. 

It’s nighttime when Andy comes for them, or at least he thinks it is if the doctor’s schedule is anything to go by. Red lights blare in the room, temporarily deafening him and he’s blinking rapidly to fight off the daze of drugs in his system when Andy storms in with her labrys in hand. Booker and Nile are on either side of her, guns in hand and it’s something out of an action movie poster. 

Which means it shouldn’t make him want to weep but he almost does anyway.

Andy lurches forward and pulls the restraints off him as Booker keeps watch by the door. At another time, Andy would have checked over him once to see how he was, at least briefly asked him if he was okay.

Now she just shoves a gun into his hand and let’s him go first through the door. It’s the only time she’ll allow it, whenever he and Nicky have been apart.

It’s a blur of bullets and blades after that. Joe runs through every idiot that dares take a shot at him, keeping a part of the vow he made. 

And it’s after he’s taken four bullets, Booker’s died once, Nile’s shirt is a bloodied mess and Andy’s labrys is quite literally dripping with blood that they finally burst through the right door.

There’s Nicky and Joe can finally breathe again. 

But then he takes in the fact that Nicky is lying half dead on the table, that he’s lost a considerable amount of weight, that his fucking arm is missing and in his pain induced haze, he’s whimpering Joe’s name over and over again. 

And Joe absolutely detonates.

The man that’s testing on Nicky turns an ugly shade of green but Joe doesn’t see it, can hardly process anything but his seething fury that’s screaming for revenge, for a bloodletting that could attempt to match an ounce of pain they gave his Nicky.

His Nicky who only ever wanted to do good, whose kindness was as boundless as his love for Joe.

They had killed this man, killed this beautiful beacon of light that formed the center of Joe’s entire world.

The doctor is begging for him to stop but Joe is screaming, internally and externally, as he rains punches down on the man’s face until it’s just a bloody mess. Even then it’s not enough, the rage and pain of the past month compounds and Joe’s punches are made with such fury that even his healing cannot stop his knuckles from turning bloody. 

And then he feels a hand on the back of his shirt, clenching his shirt tightly. It’s not Nicky’s usual grounding touch, or a touch to remind him that they need to move. 

It’s a painful grip that nearly rips his bloodied shirt right off of his back and not in the sexy way. It’s the only thing that brings him back. 

Joe pulls himself off the bloodied, mangled mess of a man to finally face Nicky and he’s barely turned all the way around when Nicky runs into his arms. Joe tries hard not to hold Nicky too tightly, knowing he was still healing from god knows how many injuries but then Nicky burrows his head into his neck tightly, soundlessly begging Joe to crush them together so they can’t be torn apart again. 

So Joe wraps his arms around Nicky more tightly and the constriction in his throat loosens a little allowing a few tears to slip through. His hands begin to tremble and that’s when Nicky draws back, pressing a hand to either side of his face. 

“What did they do to you,” Nicky murmurs, eyes so soft and sad that it breaks Joe’s heart a thousand times over. 

And then he’s kissing Joe’s tears away and Joe remembers the first time he did this, when they returned to Jerusalem years after the war and he, as Yusuf then, had wept at its gates. 

“You’re here,” Nicky whispers, running a hand through his curls. 

“I’m here,” Joe assures him, leaning into that touch.

Nicky’s hands run all over his body, his arms, his waist. Joe finally catches his wrists and kisses the inside of Nicky’s palm gently, one at a time, feeling Nicky shake with the force of a full bodied shudder. Later, he’ll worship every inch of Niccolo’s body but for now, this is enough. 

“Let’s go love,” Nicky finally says.

“Anywhere with you,” Joe admits raggedly.

They break apart and Nile extends a gun to each of them. Joe just shakes his head and takes the scimitar that Andy hands over to him with a small smirk that’s somehow simultaneously knee wobbling relief and exasperation. 

Then she lifts her labrys, gently knocking it against his own sword and Joe cannot help but smirk in return. 

“Let’s go,” she asks, glancing Nicky’s way.

“After you boss,” he replies, taking his own broadsword off Booker’s hands and spinning it once expertly. He turns to Joe and Joe sees some righteous anger burning there and is vividly reminded of the Christian knight he crossed blades with a near millennia ago. 

Except now that anger isn’t for him. It’s on behalf of him, has been on behalf of him for near millennia. Joe cannot resist knocking his shoulders once into Nicky, drawing the smallest of smiles from the man before they plunge into battle once again, side by side, as they were meant to.


End file.
